


when do these planks become a boat?

by RoseWithAllHerThorns



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-08-14 13:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20192806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseWithAllHerThorns/pseuds/RoseWithAllHerThorns
Summary: Kakashi Hatake, a well known prodigy of the Konohagakure village, is taking on his first team of genin this month.It goes horribly, but at least no one dies.





	when do these planks become a boat?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fencesit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fencesit/gifts).

It was the first day of the rest of Chitose’s life: the start of her ninja career, when she’d join a team of Genin and be trained by a Jonin. By Kakashi, who was in her bingo book despite being so young. She flipped it open, to the page where his photograph stared up at her, and wondered what he’d be like.

She would have asked her mom, if she thought that she knew. Or her dad, if he wasn’t dead. But she’d see soon enough.

Not long after the teams were announced, Tadame Aburame came to sit by her, not even quite looking at Chitose. There would be two kunoichi on the same team. Chitose stared up at the ceiling and hoped their teacher wouldn’t comment on it.

“Hello. You are?” Tadame was quiet but not soft spoken, and it made Chitose’s hair stand on end.

“I’m Chitose Chinen. Here to become a world class tracker,” and kick everyone’s ass. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“We were in the same class, remember?” Oh, was Tadame annoyed about that? Chitose remembered Tadame coming to talk to her, her louder than the buzz of her body and quieter than Chitose had judged could be ignored, and how she’d simply kept reading until Tadame gave up on her.

Chitose hadn’t talked to anyone, if she hadn’t had to. She wouldn’t have pegged Tadame as the sort to be annoyed about it. “We didn’t sit together or anything.”

“What, are you just going to go back to ignoring me when Kakashi comes?”

“What, are you just going to pretend we’re friends now?”

Tadame didn’t respond with words, but there was a sound a little like wings whirring together. Chitose wondered if it drowned out Tadame’s heartbeat, and licked her finger to turn the bingo book.

Tadame tried to get a hold of herself, or her swarm. Chitose went back to her notes, freshening up for when they got called on them. She didn’t remember much about Daisuke. Hopefully that meant he wouldn’t interrupt her.

“Hello, Daisuke.” Chitose looked up reflexively. Oh, yeah. She always forgot that Daisuke liked to wear those fancy-ass clothes.

“Hi, Tadame.” He waved casually, and Tadame tilted her head, calculating but not callous. Maybe they’d get along better.

Not that caring changed anything. Chitose intended to make the most of their time until their sensei arrived.

Time flies when you’re focused, so at first Chitose didn’t think much of her fellows’ complaints that their sensei was lagging a bit.

But once she’d finished off that section, he still wasn’t there. It was enough to make Chitose’s normal scowl dip further. She hid it with her book, zoning in and out.

“Do you think a cart ran him over or something?”

“It wouldn’t make sense for that to happen. He _is _a jonin, after all,” Tadame opined.

“I don’t know, it’d be just my luck. Do you think we get a new teacher then?” Daisuke asked.

They started talking about what they wanted their teacher to be like. Daisuke thought it was funny. Tadame seemed to be making a list of all the perfect qualities a teacher could have, like it would make him rise out of a lake and take on tutoring them. It mostly peeved Chitose. Kakashi had an almost legendary status. He as a prodigy she had been fascinated with, in and out of gossip, and here they were thinking about how they could find someone better than that.

Then again, wasn’t being this tardy a ninja sin in its own right? If this was a battlefield, they’d be dead waiting for reinforcements.

“You know, I think I hate him already,” Chitose said louder than her teammates were speaking, and the floor creaked by the door.

The door slid open to reveal Kakashi. Chitose tried not to break out into a cold sweat, pressing her book to her mouth, and watched as Daisuke’s grip on his kunai went loose.

“Sup.”

They passed greetings around, Chitose silently hoping that he hadn’t somehow figured out what she’d said. In jest or not, that wasn’t something she wanted.

“And how about introductions now, yeah?”

“I’m Daisuke Kagetsu. I like security. I dislike things that can’t be explained. In the future, I want to be become a jonin.” He sat back after stating his case, and Kakashi nodded.

“I’m Tadame Aburame. I like company and good weather. I _dislike_,” and Chitose’s gaze intensified, “nothing that I will say right now. In the future, I hope to not be a disappointment.”

She didn’t want to say it, but now she had to.

“My name is Chitose Chiten. I love to learn, I hate indecision, and my dream is to create a new ninjustsu.” It sounded like the sort of thing that would leave a mark on the clan, and she really didn’t want to repeat Daisuke.

“Well,” Kakashi clapped his hands together, “first things first. I have survival training planned for the four of us.”

\--

Chitose wondered if Kakashi would notice that she ate breakfast or not. He had the Sharingan, and she’d heard some crazy things about that.

But even the Sharingan surely _had to be in the same fucking place as you to see you._

He was late again. And Chitose didn’t need to learn patience or anything like that.

Daisuke and Tadame showed up soon enough. Daisuke even thought to bring a book, leaving Tadame the lone woman out. She simply sat down, meditating. Chitose watched her carefully, wondering if she’d spot insects crawling out of her pores or throughout her clothes.

It was underwhelming when nothing happened, but at least she hadn’t been noticed.

“Damn, I’m hungry. When do you think Kakashi-sensei is going to show up?”

“When he feels like it, probably.”

“That is in line with his behavior yesterday.”

Too hungry to focus on reading, Daisuke watched his teammates, and a frown became pronounced on his face.

“Wait, did you two already eat, or?”

Chitose didn’t bother to confirm it, but Tadame looked up, nodding slightly.

Daisuke cursed under his breath. “Shouldn’t you two be on a diet or something?”

Chitose prayed for ice affinity for just a brief moment. Just long enough to freeze him to the ground or something. That would be fine.

“I am on a diet tailored towards the health of myself and my insects. But refusing to eat would serve neither of us. I presume that Kakashi-sensei, having never worked closely with the Aburame, and being incapable of copying our techniques, did not know that.”

They turned to stare at Chitose. “What, like I’m going to listen to him telling me what to eat unless it’s some super-special strength food.” She sounded more defensive than she wanted to.

Daisuke sighed. “When you vomit, be careful not to do it on me, okay?”

“I promise nothing,” Chitose deadpanned.

Tadame laughed, then tensed a bit with shock.

They waited.

\--

Training was a mess. He was too fast for Tadame to hit, and Daisuke had been tied to a tree for much of it, and even when Chitose had gotten angry and tried to throw rocks at his book, he had merely moved it out of the way, deflecting a few back at her.

And then. _And then. _Right after lunch-

“Only the lowest of the low abandon their teammates.” The disgust in his voice made Tadame curl in on herself, even her chakra dimming, but it just pissed Chitose off.

“You’re trying to break us down before we even formed anything at all. We became teammates in name just last night! I barely spoke to them! We still know each other better than we know you!” Chitose felt steam coming from her nostrils, but she couldn’t really stop it. “You haven’t trained us at all!”

“I started this training to see if there was anything to train there. There isn’t. If you can’t work as a team, you should be sent back to the academy.” Kakashi gestured with that book of his back towards it, and somehow it was worse when he was not much older than they were.

“You- you- you’re just manipulating us so you can abandon us.” Chitose sputtered.

“If you did not want to teach, you do not have to.” Tadame was short and blunt, walking behind a tree so she didn’t have to be next to everyone.

“I want to teach,” Kakashi said, and nothing he said afterwards convinced Chitose he did, and nothing she said convinced him he didn’t.

If he was searching for something in them, or himself, neither of them found it that day.

\--

In the end, Kakashi couldn’t get their team disbanded. It was all “three genin aren’t expected to take down a jonin” and “you were assigned to teach, so teach”.

But malicious compliance was enough.

Chitose was reduced to using her stealth skills, finding other teams and when they trained and lurking in the shadows.

She didn’t like it, but she wasn’t going to give up.

None of these other teams seemed to have second, secret tests, and she didn’t think that any of them had almost been disbanded.

When their jonin fought, none were quite as fast as Kakashi was, or as effortless. She wondered if it was for show or skill, and something in her skull dimmed and ached, and wasn’t eased when she met with the rest of the team to talk about what she’d found.

\--

It was at lunch, when they were resting by a few trees that had suffered their attempts to walk up them, when Chitose gained the nerve to ask.

"Daisuke, do you think that we're..." He turned to look at her, and she almost lost her nerve.

"As a team, are we hopeless?"

He shook his head. "No way. For one, I'm in the team too, you know." He smiled, and Chitose wondered why she'd bothered.

"If you're asking if I'm still mad you were ready to let me starve, then yeah, I'm still holding a grudge. But it's not like it's going to last forever. And I'm not really mad at you."

He took a mouthful of sandwich and thought.

"In that whole game no one trusted anyone. Except me, I guess. You and Tadame thought you knew better than Kakashi, and Kakashi... I dunno, but I don't think he expected us to succeed, in hindsight. He wanted us to put aside everything and trust and help each other. None of us got here by putting ourselves and our families second. You're a huge lone wolf, Tadame tries to meet expectations and mixing them freaks her out a bit. I'm not sure if he hated getting us specifically, or if he wants some kind of... golden ideal. Like the prodigies of self-sacrifice."

Chitose looked at her sandwich, accidentally mushed, and tried to unclench her fingers. "I don't know why people call my type a lone wolf. Wolves do better in packs."

He bumped her with his shoulder. She startled a bit. "Now you're getting it."

When she dropped her sandwich, he stole it, and ate it despite her loud protests.

\--

Daisuke got in late one night to see that his dad was still up, waiting. He stalled at the front door, reflexively cautious, then breathed in. Relax, center yourself…

It wasn’t what he’d expected.

“Daisuke, I’ve been looking into other options for you on your path as a ninja. One of the members of Team Four has gotten injured in the field, and they’re currently on rest. It’s unsure whether he will report back to active duty. It’s possible that we could petition to have you transferred onto their team temporarily, and then…” He smiled, the kind of got-em smile he always had when he closed a business deal. “You were at the top of your class, after all.”

Daisuke considered it. His legs still ached from running around Konohage trying to catch the infamous cat of the village, since they would never get a C rank with their jonin against them, and irritation lingered in his system. And yet…

“I can’t do that to him.” He smiled, shrugging. “What would he get after getting kicked out? Paired up with Kakashi? No one deserves that.”

\--

“If you want to leave the team with me,” Tadame started, “I’ve been looking into that.”

Chitose looked up. “What?”

“There’s only so many jonin in the village, but there are more available than were set up to be mentors. My uncle has been thinking of staying in the village to be with family more, and he’s a jonin. That would take him off long-term missions, and it would put him in direct charge of another member of our clan. It makes sense to change, if an Aburame is available. And since we’re a team…”

Sometimes it didn’t feel like it. Chitose had always assumed that being part of a team would be the solution to living on the fringes, or at least mean she had support, but they’d fought from day one, and she’d had to seek them out the same as any other person and…

She would miss them, she realized, if she left. She would wonder what they were doing. She would ache for them, trapped in the same hopeless situation.

\--

“Kakashi-san.” Tadame didn’t call him a teacher. He had never been a teacher to them, much as they wished for it. He used a hand to gesture her closer, but kept reading that orange book of his. “We’ve looked into removing you as our mentor, like you wanted. It would be beneficial to both of us if you’d sign these papers.”

He looked up then. She wondered if, too late, he’d try to convince them to stay. Tell them he’d teach them. She didn’t know if she’d have the strength to go through with it, if he did.

But that wasn’t a problem. He put his reading aside long enough to look over it, check to make sure it was legitimate, and sign off on it.

“I see all three of you are moving together.”

“Of course, Kakashi-san. We are, after all, a team.”

He watched her leave and join her teammates, all the way out the door.


End file.
